


Cows on my side

by Em_Jaye



Series: The Long Way Around [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 17:43:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19817314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: Woody Allen once said, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans." With that in mind, Darcy had to wonder if there was anyone who could make God laugh quite like Steve Rogers.May 1970: Roadtrip





	Cows on my side

**Day One**

Darcy’s eyes shot back and forth from his face to the door and back again. “Do…you need help?”

He shook his head. “No, I can pick a lock on my own.”

“Then…” she gestured to the doorknob. “Wanna…do it?”

Steve took a deep breath. “This feels wrong.”

“It is wrong,” she assured him. “It’s breaking and entering. It’s literally illegal.”

“Well, if we want information on Pym, this is the only other place I can think of to get it,” he said. “Everything else we’ve tried has turned up empty.”

There was nothing on Hank in HR and no one wanted to volunteer any information on the long-distance phone call they’d made to the New York office of Stark Industries.

Darcy’s nose wrinkled. “Who’s talking who into what, here? I’m fine with this.” She motioned to the door again. “Pick the lock and let me get my creep on.”

He shook his head a second time, shaking away the guilt, and bent to one knee with the lockpick in hand. He was out of practice; it took a few minutes of jimmying and watching Darcy nervously bounce on the balls of her feet out of the corner of his eye before he felt the bolt pop and the knob turned easily in his hand. “Creep on,” he said as he got to his feet and pushed open the door to Peggy’s office.

Darcy took two steps inside and beckoned to him with a jerk of her head. “I’m not creeping alone,” she insisted. “I need my bodyguard. And someone to hold the flashlight.”

With a strong urge to roll his eyes, Steve followed her inside and shut the door behind them. He accepted the flashlight and clicked the heavy switch to flood the small space with a thick band of light. He swept the beam over Peggy’s neat desk and then over to the bookshelves where Darcy had started running her finger along the spines.

“Jeezy petes,” she muttered with a shake of her head. “I swear Peggy Carter has to be the first and last woman to actually do it all.”

“How so?” he asked, almost amused.

Darcy moved to the side and revealed the framed photos she’d found. “Ass-kicking super spy career woman _and_ wife and mother to like, the cutest family on the planet?” She clucked her tongue. “They should have studied _her_ blood for traces of the super soldier serum.”

Confused, Steve followed her across the room. He’d seen some of these photos before. Peggy and two dark haired children in front of a Christmas tree. Peggy shaking hands with JFK. A man with an aluminum crutch on one arm and his other around Peggy. _Daniel_ , a voice in the back of his head reminded him. _Daniel Sousa_. Peggy’s husband. There were other photos too. Older Peggy with teenagers. With a woman who looked about her same age, laughing in front of an automat in New York, bundled up against the cold. Standing with Daniel on either side of their son in a graduation cap and gown.

Steve felt his stomach twist unpleasantly. For the first time since he’d been given the serum, his memory felt faulty. Like something he couldn’t trust. Had those photos been here last time? Was there always so much evidence that her life had gone on just fine without him?

“Oh my God,” Darcy said in a loud whisper and shot across the room to the desk. Steve watched curiously as she seized a framed photo and plucked it from the collection at the corner. “You were so cute!”

Unable to help himself, he scoffed. “Yeah, cute like an angry, three-legged kitten, maybe.” He would have been ashamed of the relief he felt, knowing that his photo still held a place of honor on her desk—just like he remembered it—if it weren’t chased away by more uncertainty. Steve followed Darcy to stand behind her, surprised to find that the frame she’d snatched up held a small, 4x6 photo of his pre-serum self. He frowned. “Where was that?”

“Uh, no,” she countered. “Cute like a cute, coffee shop, art nerd I totally would have slipped my number to if I’d met him at Culver.” Without skipping a beat, she pointed to the empty spot on the desk. “And I found it right there. Behind the other pictures of her kids. Why?”

Unnerved, Steve watched her return the frame to the cluster. “I just…” he felt his brow furrow. “When I was here last week it was…” He looked again at the grouping of frames. “Bigger,” he finished his thought.

Darcy raised an eyebrow. “Bigger?” she repeated. “By how much?” He moved his hands to indicate the 8x10 he was certain he’d held a week ago. She squinted and looked at the corner again. “A frame that size wouldn’t fit here,” she stated plainly. “Maybe you’re remembering wrong.”

“I have perfect recall and a photographic memory,” he said tightly, trying to rationalize why it bothered him so much that his current reality wasn’t aligning with his memory. “I don’t remember things wrong.”

“Oh,” she nodded and flashed him a quick, tight smile. “Okay then.”

He watched her rummage lightly through an orderly stack of papers and a date book. “How could I have remembered it wrong?” he asked, before he clarified, “I didn’t. But how could I have?”

Darcy looked at him in surprise. “Well I don’t know the specifics,” she reminded him. “But I assume the last time you were snooping around this office, having just time-traveled, you were probably under a little bit of stress?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“Was it the first thing you saw on her desk?”

“Yeah…”

“And the only photo you picked up?”

“…Yeah.”

She shrugged. “Perception is reality,” she said easily and dropped suddenly to her knees to pick the lock of the filing cabinet beneath Peggy’s desk.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

She looked up. “Can I have some light, please?” He moved the light over her hands. “It’s the most basic concept in psych, my friend. It means you saw what you wanted to see. You wanted Peggy to have some big giant photo of you be the only thing on her desk, so you didn’t bother looking at the rest.” She paused, waiting for a response before she offered him a smile. “Everybody does it,” she added when the lock of the filing cabinet unstuck with a heavy _thunk._ “Even people with perfect recall and photographic memory.”

Steve narrowed his eyes at her and fought the urge to scowl. He didn’t know what to think. And he didn’t want to admit she might be right. “Just find Pym’s address so we can get out of here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waved his words away. “Working on it.”

***

Darcy squinted at him in the early morning light as they cruised through Jersey City. “You know, the history books never mentioned that Captain America had such sticky fingers.” From the passenger seat of the ’65 Buick they’d acquired, she looked small and sleepy, her legs curled beneath her like a cat. “Particles, military uniforms, food, personnel files, entire cars now,” she shook her head. “Never would’ve guessed you’d be so quick to steal so much shit.”

“We’ll give most of it back,” Steve said immediately before he shot his eyes over to her. “And _you_ stole the personnel file.”

“I’m not a national icon,” she reminded around a yawn. “No one cares about my fall from grace. Technically, I just stole the information. I put that file back.” She squinted again. “You’re still the klepto on this team.”

He offered her a half-smile. “Does it tarnish the image?”

She nodded. “Don’t worry,” she yawned again. “I won’t tell the Smithsonian,” she promised and rested her head against the seatback. “Wake me up when we get to New York.”

He was happy to let her sleep—and not just because of the nosebleed she’d been trying to hide since she’d first woken up. He wanted some time to think about what they were doing; to decide if they were making the right move. When Natasha had not reappeared in a minute like she’d promised, they had waited. All day and into the evening; Darcy had stayed in the woods while Steve had pilfered a little food from the mess hall. Over a dinner of apples and hard-boiled eggs, Darcy had suggested trying to find Pym as a plan B.

“It’s not that I’m doubting she’ll come back,” she’d said quickly. “I’m just trying to spread the hope around. Not put all my eggs in one basket.”

Getting Pym involved, he’d considered, wasn’t the worst idea he’d heard. If nothing else, he’d be familiar with some part of their experience—able to understand how they’d gotten to 1970 and how they’d gotten stuck. He might not have a spare pair of GPS bracelets laying around, but, according to Darcy, he was one of the brightest minds of his generation. It certainly couldn’t hurt anything to ask for his help.

And if nothing else, he thought as he pressed his foot to the gas pedal of their stolen car, it was something to _do._ Something that felt like moving forward. Something other than standing around, waiting to be rescued.

It was early afternoon when he slowed to a stop outside of an East Side apartment building and checked the number against the address Darcy had scribbled down from the file in Peggy’s office. Darcy leaned over him to look out his window. “Well, there it is,” she said. “I’d guess he’s probably in there ranting about Stark and licking his wounds and smoking like, two cigarettes at once while he drinks gin and plots world domination.” She sat back, brightening at the idea. “In that case, we’re intervening. He’s got the makings of a super villain and we’re totally setting him back on the right track by asking for his help.”

“He doesn’t strike me as a gin guy,” Steve said mildly, letting his eyes roam to the fifteenth row of windows where—according to the paperwork—they’d find Pym. “My money’s on bourbon.”

“Gross,” she wrinkled her nose and reached for her seatbelt. “Come on, let’s go blow his mind.”

Steve held up a hand. “Uh, maybe I should go by myself.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“Because I’m more familiar with our situation,” he said.

“And?” she asked. “I don’t think that’s going to make too much of a difference in whether or not he laughs and slams the door in our faces.”

He set his jaw in agitation. There was no good reason for Darcy not to come with him, other than she was a little abrasive and difficult to take, even in small doses. And he didn’t need an abrasive element right now. He just wanted to get in and get out as smoothly as possible. But he couldn’t say any of that. He glanced around. “We’re also double-parked.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said, relenting much quicker than he thought she would. “You throw us on the mercy of super science and I’ll,” she sighed, “find a place to park.”

“It’s an often-overlooked, but essential part of any operation,” he said, relieved they weren’t going to argue about this, too.

“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “Just get out.”

He did and she clambered over the center console gracelessly to deposit herself in the driver’s seat. “I’ll be down as soon as I can,” he said when she rolled down the driver’s side window. “Just circle the block if you can’t find anything.”

“Circle?” Darcy repeated with a laugh and slid her hands along the wide, chrome steering wheel. “This thing’s the size of a housing project. I could maybe,” she craned her neck to see the front of the vehicle, “octagon?”

Steve smirked. “Fine,” he said. “Octagon. Just be careful.”

“Sure thing, Dad,” she said. “Try not to steal anything else while you’re in there.”

He gave her a quick salute. “I’ll do my best.”

The elevator was out of order, so Steve took the stairs two at a time, trying not to think about Darcy’s throw-away comment about Pym laughing at them and slamming the door. He stopped somewhere around the tenth floor and frowned. He wouldn’t do that, he told himself. Not a guy who’d devoted his life to finding a way to shrink a human being down to the size of an ant.

But the uncertainty Darcy’s words had struck him with made him go slower up the last few flights of stairs, turning his pitch over in his mind a few times, wondering how best to introduce himself to ensure he was taken seriously.

He checked the address again when he made it to the fifteenth floor. Apartment 15C was easy enough to find—located across the hall from the broken elevator and next door to a laundry room that smelled like borax. Steve took a deep breath and knocked twice on the door.

Nothing.

He knocked again and waited, reminding himself that this was not a scenario that would be helped by kicking in the door. No matter how impatient he was feeling.

“Didn’t he give you a key?”

Steve turned around to find a young, black woman with a basket of clothes propped on one hip, looking expectant. “Sorry?”

“Hank,” she said and nodded to the closed door. “He’s been gone a few days, I figured you were here to water his plants or something.”

“Oh,” Steve shook his head. “Uh, no. I didn’t—” he stopped himself and frowned, praying he hadn’t heard her right. “Did you say he’s gone?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I saw him Monday, I think.” Her face twisted in a grimace. “He seemed like he was in rough shape.”

Forcing his composure to remain intact, Steve nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about. I’m his brother,” he held out a hand and waited for her to shake it. “S—Scott,” he stammered, giving the first name that came to mind. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of him.”

She shrugged and dropped his hand. “Good luck. He had a suitcase and a bunch of his science shit with him.”

“Of course, he did,” Steve muttered, shaking his head. “He didn’t say where he was going?”

The woman shook her head. “Not really. My Aunt Tracey’s the super, though,” she added. “She said he paid his rent up through the end of the summer and said he had to go home for a while.”

He hoped the nod he gave her was convincing enough. If Hank had a brother named Scott, he’d know where home was. As a total stranger who’d recently stolen the man’s life’s work, however, Steve had no idea. “Uh, thanks,” he said distractedly, taking a few steps toward the stairwell. “I’ll um—I’ll give my mom a call,” he lied. “Maybe she’s heard from him.”

Darcy was just pulling around the corner, peering over the top of the steering wheel like a little old lady, when he reached the sidewalk. She slowed down long enough for him to climb into the passenger seat; her lips twisted into a thoughtful frown when he delivered the news. “Well,” she said thoughtfully, after a moment’s consideration. “We could split up, I guess.”

He felt his eyebrows dip together. “Why would we split up?”

“It’s either that or we both go to San Francisco together,” she shrugged and pulled the car park at the nearest empty spot of curb. “I’m fine either way.”

He shook his head. “Why would we go to San Francisco?”

“Because that’s where he’s from,” she said plainly. Like this was public knowledge. “And that’s where Pym Tech is…was…” she frowned. “Will be? I don’t know. My tenses are all messed up.”

“How do you know that?” he asked. “Was it in his file?”

Darcy nodded. “Well yeah, but I already knew that. It’s where he met Janet Van Dyne.”

“Who?”

“His wife who mysteriously disappeared in the eighties,” she said, still with that tone that said this was something he should already know. “I think I watched every _Unsolved Mysteries_ and documentary on her a million times when I was a kid. Jane’s way more into the conspiracy theory side of her disappearance,” she added. “But yeah, I’ve devoted an embarrassingly large amount of time to reading everything I could about Janet. She was a _genius_. Like ground-breaking, change-the-world kind of—” Darcy stopped herself and frowned. “And oh my God, why didn’t I think of this before? Forget Pym,” she waved a hand at the apartment building behind them. “It’s 1970—Janet Van Dyne is still totally alive and working at Berkeley. We should get _her_ to help us.”

His head was starting to hurt. “What makes you think she would?”

“Because quantum physics is her entire life. And nobody’s paying attention to her yet, which is good for us who need to stay on the DL.” When he hesitated, she continued. “And, as far as who’s going where? I’m calling dibs on a road trip over waiting in the New Jersey woods for Natasha to come back.”

Steve rubbed at his closed eyes. “So, you want to drive this stolen car all the way across the country in the hopes that Janet Van Dyne is going to be waiting to help us get back to the future from her lab in Berkeley?”

“Uh huh.”

“And you want me to stay here and wait for Nat to come back,” he continued, unimpressed.

Darcy smiled. “Don’t act like you’d miss me, Rogers. We both know that’s not true.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think I’m going to go along with this?”

She shook her head. “Not even a little bit,” she assured him, still smiling. “But I’m hoping the promise of maybe getting help from Janet Van Dyne would appeal more to your,” she wiggled her fingers in his direction, “Man-With-a-Plan-liness than sitting around, doing nothing, waiting to be rescued like Princess Peach.”

She had a point. He knew she had a point. She knew that he knew that she had a point, he could see it in her expression. Waiting in New Jersey was an indeterminate sentence; ripe with opportunity to be spotted by a SHIELD agent, to be discovered by Howard or Peggy or anyone else who might recognize him, to throw off the balance he’d been trying diligently to protect. It was a nightmare waiting to happen.

He sighed and rubbed his eyes again. “And how do you suggest we finance this cross-country road trip?” he asked. “Because I’ve got about forty bucks in a pocket I forgot about in my tac gear.”

When he looked back up, Darcy was still grinning. “With help from my sweet sugar mama, Claire Foster,” she said and reached into the backseat to retrieve her gray peacoat. She dug into the interior pocket and produced a wallet from which she dug a stack of British notes and fanned them out for him to see. “Two weeks’ worth of a stipend I wasn’t allowed to tell Jane or Erik about,” she said. “Once I exchange it for some cold hard American cash, it should be enough that you won’t have to fall back on your mad thieving for a few days.”

Out of alternatives and with very little energy to argue, Steve felt his shoulders move without his permission—his body agreeing before his mind could catch up. “Fine,” he said aloud. “We’ll road trip. But I’m driving.”

Darcy balked. “Why? Because you don’t think women can drive?”

“Because your nose is bleeding again,” he said, and pointed to the stream of blood staining the fair skin above her lip.

Amid Darcy’s cursing and grumbling, they swapped seats again and Steve said a quick prayer to anyone who might still be listening to him that he was making the right decision. 

***

The sleepy-eyed desk clerk at the motel outside of Columbus barely looked up from her book when Darcy approached the window.

“King?” she asked, already reaching for the wall of keys.

Darcy wrinkled her nose. “Gag,” she said. “He’s my brother.”

Behind her, Steve rolled his eyes. Stopping at motels had not been part of the plan to get to California in three days. If he’d had it his way, Darcy would have slept in the car and he would have been fine to power through the next seventy-two hours behind the wheel.

But in her pitch to stop for the night, Darcy was kind enough to remind him that, while a pair of toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste were purchased from a vending machine at a truck stop, neither of them had showered in three days.

“Eight dollars, please,” the clerk said with another glance in his direction.

Darcy coughed. “Excuse me?”

The young woman behind the glass shrugged. “We had to raise our prices,” she said. “Sorry. You still want the room?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said, recovering. “Yeah, an eight dollar hotel room is fine. Thank you.”

He took the key to room six when she handed it to him outside. “You forget about inflation?”

“Sure did,” she admitted with a grin. “At least they had a double room free. I didn’t really feel like torturing a cliché so early in our trip.”

Steve unlocked the door and pushed it open, motioning for her to go in ahead. “Likewise,” he muttered. “But I could’ve done without the gag.”

Her smile stayed in place as she passed him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Had to sell it, didn’t I?”

Steve didn’t answer, but Darcy didn’t seem to mind as she dropped her belongings on one of the double beds and immediately called dibs on the shower.

**Day Two**

Steve didn’t sleep for the second night in a row. He lay awake on his uncomfortable double bed listening to Darcy snoring softly and occasionally mumbling in her sleep. Her bed squeaked loudly every time she moved, worrying Steve that she’d wake up. He did his best not to move.

As the sky outside their window lightened to the silvery blue of early dawn, Steve got out of bed and left a note that he’d be back soon.

He left her the keys so she didn’t panic and let himself out of the room as silently as he could. The closest gas station was half a mile up the road, just a far enough walk to get his limbs feeling loose and limber after a day in the car.

From a friendly station attendant, just opening for the morning, Steve parted with some of his own cash and purchased a map of Indiana and Illinois. With a warning to avoid Dayton if he wanted to steer clear of the new interstate construction, Steve was thanked and wished on his way.

Darcy was awake when he returned, standing in front of the desk in the corner of the room. She’d slept with her hair wet and it curled in unruly angles and fell disobediently into her face. She had opened her wallet again and laid it flat, displaying her ID and credit cards, a wrinkled faded photograph, and the cash to get them the rest of the way to California. She gave him a half-smile over her shoulder in greeting.

“You okay?” Steve asked, noticing her pensive expression when she turned back to her inventory.

“Uh, yeah,” she said, distracted. “I just…I don’t know how this is supposed to work.”

Steve sat down on his bed and let out a heavy sigh. He’d been hoping they could avoid getting into the specifics of their new trajectory this early. He liked the feeling of moving forward, of working toward something. He didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that this plan was just as unlikely to fix anything as it had been to just stay in the woods.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We definitely don’t want any attention on us. We don’t have any kind of ID that makes sense and I have no idea how long we have until someone comes looking for their car.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “As far as a backstory goes,” he shrugged. “If anyone asks, we’ll just keep it vague and try to be as forgettable as we can.” He cleared his throat and caught himself before he got too grim. “But I mean, the best aspect of this plan is that we’re not staying anywhere long enough to attract suspicion. We’re going to be fine. We’ll get Van Dyne to help us—maybe…” he sighed again and shook his head. “I don’t know. It might take longer than we’re expecting but it’s still a good plan. And, like you said, it’s a better plan than sitting around, waiting for rescue. We’ve just gotta keep moving, keep our heads down, and do whatever we have to do to get home.”

Darcy turned back and nodded solemnly before she bit her lip. “Okay... But I still don’t know how _this_ is supposed to work?” she asked, sliding a few inches to the left to reveal a coffee percolator.

He blinked.

“Oh,” Steve’s face grew hot as he got to his feet and crossed the room. “You just fill it and plug it in,” he said, avoiding her eyes as he pulled the lid off to reveal a basket of stale-smelling coffee grounds.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the smile she was trying to suppress. “I don’t know if I trust what’s in there,” she confessed. “I’ll just brush my teeth and we can get on the road.” She stopped in the bathroom doorway before she added, “Good speech, though,” and gave him a thumbs-up.

***

“Cows on my side,” Darcy said quietly, a few hours later.

Steve grit his teeth. “I’m not playing this game,” he said, repeating himself for the third time.

“You don’t have a choice, pal,” Darcy shrugged, not looking up from the map she was studying. “I don’t make the rules.”

“So, you’re telling me some outside force is making you…tally up cows?”

“Rules of the road trip,” she said, remarkably unruffled by how much she was irritating him. She looked up again and nodded to yet another pasture along the road in Indiana. “Cows on my side.”

He shook his head. “This game doesn’t even make sense,” he groused, wondering if maybe he shouldn’t have tried to sleep at least a few hours back in Columbus. “How do you win?”

“It’s easy,” she laughed. “Cows on your side—point for you. Cows on my side—point for me. Whoever has the most cows by the end of the trip wins.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

She scoffed. “I don’t care. Cows on your side,” she said quickly, pointing out a few grazing black cows to his left. “At least take the point.”

Steve gave her his best unimpressed look from the corner of his eye as he made a turn, revealing a small, country cemetery on Darcy’s side.

To his surprise, she gasped and dropped her head back with a groan. “Damnit!” she proclaimed.

“What?” Steve demanded, seized with a brief flash of panic, wondering if her headache had spiked again.

“Cemetery,” she said simply and pointed out her window. “I lost all my cows.”

He stared at her for as long as he dared take his eyes off the road. Against his will, he felt the corner of his lips twitch. “Does that mean I’m winning?”

Darcy glared back; her eyes narrowed. “For the time being,” she said. “But don’t get comfortable. We got a long way to go and this country is full of cows.”

***

Congestion surrounding Chicago added three unexpected hours to their trip and as the sun set on their second day in the car, every nerve in Steve’s body was standing on end.

And Darcy Lewis was doing her best to stay perched atop every. Last. One.

“Did you know that you can be declared legally insane after 72 hours without sleep?” she asked while a dark purple sky chased a thick band of orange sunlight down to the horizon.

“I’m fine,” he said tightly. He flexed and unflexed his fingers around the wheel. “You should sleep if you’re tired.”

Her nose has been bleeding on and off since that morning and he caught the way she kept wincing as she pressed her tongue against her teeth. Plus, he told himself, if she was asleep, the car would be quiet. He might even be able to hear himself think.

Darcy scoffed. “Nice try; why don’t you let me drive for a while? You can reset.”

“No thanks,” he gripped the wheel tightly, forcing himself to focus on the darkening road, scanning for potential threats through the windshield. “I’m fine.”

Darcy glared again and shook her head as she bent forward and popped open the glove box. He listened to her rattle around, replacing the maps she’d been studying and rummaging through the owner of the car’s possessions.

“If you’re not going to stop for _you_ ,” she said pointedly. “At least stop at the next A&P and I’ll get you a Coke or something to keep you awake.”

He didn’t have the energy to tell her that caffeine wouldn’t have any impact on him. He figured she wanted him to stop because she wanted something for herself and, if he was being honest, after driving all day through the muggy Great Lakes region in early summer, a Coke would taste pretty good.

“Next gas station is about twenty minutes down the road,” Darcy informed him when she returned to the car and handed him an open, sweating bottle of soda. She had one for herself and a package of Red Vines in her other hand and wiped her wet palms on her jeans when she climbed back in beside him.

Steve nodded and put the bottle to his lips. Cold, crisp, and sugary, the Coke hit his tongue in a welcome, quick relief. He drained most of the bottle in a single gulp and set it in their unused ashtray in the center console. He caught the way Darcy was watching him as she pulled open her package of candy. “What?” he asked as they pulled back onto the road.

“Nothing!” she exclaimed and held up her hands. “I just didn’t realize you were so thirsty. I would’ve bought more.”

“It’s fine,” he assured her. “We should conserve that cash as much as possible.”

They were quiet again until the gas station, where Steve cleaned the windshield and Darcy went inside to pay for a fill-up. She waited until the attendant had returned to the service shop before she turned back to him and held out her hand. “Come on, Steve,” she said flatly. “Cut the superhero shit. Give me the keys and take a nap.”

“I don’t _need_ a nap,” he insisted, but immediately wondered if that was true. His head was feeling fuzzy. His thoughts not quite as sharp as he’d like. But still, he shook his head, trying not to focus on how intensely Darcy was watching him. “I’m fine,” he repeated, dismayed when his words sounded sluggish. Like he was already half asleep.

But no. He couldn’t let Darcy drive. Not with now she’d been feeling.

He shook his head again. “Honestly,” he insisted. “I’m fi—”

Steve’s vision swam and tilted sharply at an angle as Darcy moved patiently toward him. “It’s okay, big guy,” he heard her say. Her voice sounded muffled and far away, but he felt the pressure of her hand on his arm, pushing him down and into the passenger seat. “There we go,” she said kindly. “Lay back.”

“M’fine,” he mumbled. His face was no longer cooperating. Everything was steadily getting darker. Deep down he knew this was bad. He should be panicking. He should be trying to figure out what was happening to him.

But he was so _tired._ And Darcy had pulled the lever on his seat to drop it into a recline. He felt her fingers in his as she untangled the keys from his grip.

“Sweet dreams, Cap,” he heard her say before his senses finally gave up and everything went black.

**Day Four**

Steve awoke with a jolt, his mind snapped into consciousness like someone had shaken him. “What the hell—”

“Oh, thank God,” Darcy’s voice yanked his attention to the left. Her window was down, and her dark hair whipped into her face. She chewed on a bite of the Red Vine clutched between her palm and the steering wheel and she shot him a smile. “Morning, Glory,” she continued. “How’re you feeling?”

He blinked rapidly, trying to shake the fog from his head. “Fine,” he lied. His mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton and there was a mild ringing in his ears that wasn’t helped by the hum of the road beneath their feet. “How long was I—”

“A day and a half,” Darcy answered before he could finish his thought. “I was starting to freak out,” she admitted. “I thought I might have killed you.”

“What?” Memories were starting to sharpen again. He remembered being tired—bordering on exhausted—and arguing with Darcy somewhere in Illinois. He shook his head again. “Why did you think you killed me?”

“It totally would have been on accident,” she said, dropping her chin to rip off another bite of candy without taking her eyes off the road. “But you were really starting to piss me off with that whole…I’m-a-super-soldier-I-don’t-need-to-sleep-or-hydrate-or-take-care-of-myself bullshit.”

He rubbed his eyes. He remembered that part. “So?”

“So…I drugged your Coke.”

Steve’s eyes shot open and he bolted upright. “ _What_?”

“You _needed_ to sleep!” she argued immediately. “You were going to kill us both if you didn’t rest and let me drive for at least a little while so I did the only thing I could think of short of cracking you over the head with the tire iron.”

He gaped at her. “How did you…”

“Quaaludes,” she answered with a shrug. “The kind gentleman who’s lending us this car? Andrew Streatfield, I believe the registration says, had a whole bottle in the glove compartment.”

“Quaaludes?” he repeated in disbelief. “Aren’t those…”

“Illegal?” she finished for him and shook her head. “Not yet.”

“I was going to say addictive,” he muttered, rubbing at his temples, wondering if it was even possible to pinpoint the source of his headache anymore.

“Calm down, Nancy Reagan,” she rolled her eyes. “You’re fine. You just needed a hard reboot.” He ran a hand down his face and smacked his lips. Darcy glanced over once before she held out a bottle of orange juice she’d stuck between her hip and the center consol. “Here,” she said, returning her attention to the road. “Hydrate—you’re probably going to feel like garbage for a minute.”

Steve took it without argument and took a long drink. It was a little warm and with more pulp than he usually preferred, but it was a welcome change to his dry, sticky tongue. It wasn’t until he’d nearly finished it that he forced himself to stop and regard his companion with suspicion. “Did you put something in this, too?”

Darcy shook her head. “Just a little LSD,” she said lightly and almost immediately started giggling. “I’m just kidding,” she continued, assuring Steve that he’d not managed to keep his expression as neutral as he’d hoped. “I’m just kidding, I promise. It’s just juice.”

Steve shook his head and finished the drink. “You’re not funny.”

“I’m actually _really_ funny,” she countered around another mouthful of Red Vines. “You’re just cranky.”

Despite his best effort, Steve found he could not keep his mouth set in disapproval for very long. She had a point. “Where are we, anyway?”

“Missouri—just saw a sign for Springfield a little while ago.”

He nodded. “Should put us in California by Sunday?”

“Monday, champ,” Darcy corrected. “You lost a day.”

“Right,” he groused and opened the glove box to retrieve one of their maps. “How are _you_ feeling?” he asked, remembering that there’d been a reason he had demanded to be the only one driving.

“Well,” she tipped her head to one side in thought. “My mouth doesn’t taste like metal anymore—at least, not all the time. Only when I sneeze now.”

He frowned. “That’s…an improvement, I guess?”

She shrugged. “My head still feels like someone’s got it in a vice and my nose was bleeding again when I woke up this morning but only for a little bit.”

He regarded her carefully, wondering how she could be so flippant about her own health, knowing what the Ancient One had told them all. About how she wasn’t supposed to have time-traveled at all. How any further jumps without some kind of stabilizing force would likely kill her. How completely and totally screwed they were if Janet Van Dyne was not working out of a lab in Berkeley part-time like she thought she was.

She caught his frown and glanced over. “It’s cool,” she promised. “I’m going to be fine—we just gotta get to Oakland.”

Steve nodded. “I know,” he assured her. “You’ll be home before you know it.”

“In the meantime,” she said, brightening once more. “While you were passed out, I hustled twenty bucks out of some idiots at a bar in Saint Louis, so breakfast is on me next place we stop.”

He smiled briefly. “How’d you manage that?”

“You don’t want to know.” Again, she only waited a second for his smile to drop away before she grinned. “I’m kidding! It was foosball.” Steve rolled his eyes and started folding the map again. “Listen, you’re going to think about this later,” she went on, a smile still on her face. “When this is all a weird, distant memory. You’re going to think about this road trip and you’re gonna laugh, mister.”

For the second time in only a few minutes, Steve felt himself fighting not to smile. “Give me one of those Red Vines,” he muttered, reaching for the bag before she could protest.

By afternoon, any good will they’d been feeling toward each other had dissipated once more and the car had morphed into a sauna of tension.

For the third time in as many minutes, Darcy had turned volume up on the radio and Steve felt like his temples might detonate from his throbbing headache. She glanced over and bit her lip. “Is this bugging you?”

 _Don’t snap,_ he told himself. _Just lie and say it’s fine._ “Yeah,” he said, ignoring his own advice in record time. “My head feels like it’s going to explode and this heavy metal shit you insist on listening to isn’t doing me any favors.”

Darcy blinked in surprise and reached over to shut the radio off. “Jesus,” she muttered. “You could have just said something.”

“I haven’t exactly been hiding it,” he snapped back.

She shot him a dubious look. “Oh, sorry for not being super in-tune with your mood swings, Your Highness. I’ve been a little busy driving this fucking yacht across the country.”

“Yeah, I know,” he retorted, ignoring that little voice again. The one that was begging him to shut up and drop this. The one that was warning him if he didn’t stop soon, he’d be short the only ally he had in this nightmare. “My life’s only been flashing before my eyes because you’ve apparently managed to go twenty-four years of your life without ever hearing of a turn signal.”

She scoffed. “Your life’s been flashing before your eyes?” she repeated. “That must be a wild ride. Just images of you telling everyone how disappointed you are in them, cut between mild-mannered felonies and bringing your alien enemy bullshit down to earth to ruin everyone’s day?”

He paused, mouth open, not wanting to admit that, in the event his life ever _did_ flash before his eyes, it would probably look a lot like that. “Can we just…” he balled his fists. “Can we have some goddamn silence for a change?”

“I had plenty of silence when you were unconscious,” she muttered.

“You mean when you _drugged_ me?” he asked, aware that raising his voice would only make his head hurt worse.

“You mean when I had to give you a hard reboot because you’re a grown-ass man who doesn’t know how to take care of himself?”

“I don’t need you to take care of me.”

“I don’t _want_ to take care of you,” she assured him. “Do it yourself and I won’t have to—” she cut herself off with a gasp as the horn of an 18-wheeler blared from the lane into which she’d just drifted. Darcy jerked the wheel hard to the right and avoided a collision by inches. The truck flew past them, still laying on its horn, and the Buick rumbled to a stop on the shoulder where she put it in park and rested her head on the steering wheel, breathing hard.

With a dizzying rush of something between relief and fury, Steve turned to face her. “Get out. I’m driving.”

“I’m not letting you drive,” she shot back up. “You’re agitated.”

“I’m _agitated_ because you are going out of your way to get me killed today,” he said slowly, enunciating every syllable. He pushed open his door and got out of the car, squinting in the bright afternoon sun.

Darcy followed, slamming her door behind her. “If I wanted to kill you, I would’ve just smothered you during your thirty-six-hour nap and put us _both_ out of our misery. But I didn’t do that. I thought you might actually want to live to see us get out of this mess, which is why I knocked your ass out in the first place, because if I hadn’t then _you_ would have been the one who got us killed behind the wheel.”

“What do you want? A medal for not murdering me while I slept?”

“I want you to stop acting like such an asshole for more than ten minutes at a time,” she said, throwing up her hands. “That’s all I’m asking for.” He watched, seething, as an idea struck her and she went on. “Oh, and just so we’re clear, you could line up every human being on the face of the earth and ask each and every one of them and not _one single person_ would say that Creedence Clearwater Revival is heavy metal. Not one.”

He inhaled sharply and clenched his jaw. He placed his hands on the baked hood of the car, bothered more by the woman in front of him than the burns he was putting into his palms. “I honestly do not give the slightest bit of damn about what you think you need to educate me on regarding music or pop culture or how to drive this goddamn car—”

“Then what?” she demanded. “What is it that you’re giving _so much_ damn about? Because I know it’s not the music or the driving that’s got you so pissed off. This isn’t exactly a picnic for me either, but you could at least have the decency to fight with me about what’s actually behind all this anger.”

“There’s no point in fighting with you about what’s actually behind all this anger because it wouldn’t do anything! Because nothing you and I say to each other is going to change the fact that I made a decision to spend the rest of my life with the only woman I’ve ever loved and instead of doing that I’m stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere babysitting you in this bullshit situation and—” The look on Darcy’s face cut him off, letting him know that he had, in fact, just said too much. Steve’s shoulders dropped as her eyes filled with tears. “Ah, fuck.”

Her face crumpled as the tears crashed down onto her cheeks and put a hand over her mouth to cover the sob that hiccoughed up from her chest.

Logically speaking, Steve knew this reaction wasn’t entirely on him. He’d had a feeling she was nearing her breaking point. That someday, at some provocation, the reality of their predicament was going to catch up with her and take a hammer to that boundless optimism. And when that happened, he’d told himself, tears would inevitably follow.

But knowing that didn’t make the reality of it any more pleasant. Steve closed his eyes, immediately flushed with regret. “Darcy, I’m sorry—”

“Shut up,” she snapped and sniffled, pushing angrily at the tears on her cheeks. “Just shut up and leave me alone.” She opened the backdoor of the Buick and reached inside, grabbing her coat and the plastic orange juice bottle she’d refilled with water that afternoon. She slammed the door, shaking the car and, to his dismay, started walking down the highway.

“Darcy,” he called after her. “Come on.”

“I’m releasing you from your babysitting duty,” she yelled back, not turning around. “Go do whatever you want—I’ll find my own way home.”

He rolled his eyes and started walking after her. “Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?”

She stopped and turned back around. Tears still stuck in her eyes and her fair cheeks were blotchy and red. “Taking the car and leaving you here would have been dramatic,” she informed him. “Would you prefer I did that?”

He sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes,” he insisted. “I am! That was a really shitty thing to say and I’m sorry. I didn’t…” he stopped and shook his head. “Look, you don’t have to accept my apology, but please don’t walk off in the middle of the desert because I said something—”

“Awful,” she finished for him.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Awful. I didn’t—” for the second time, the words _mean it_ died on his tongue. “No part of this is your fault,” he said instead of a lie. Because he had meant it. He was angry that he was in this situation instead of living the life he’d decided he wanted—the choice he’d _earned_. But it wasn’t Darcy’s fault. She was just as much a victim as he was. Even more so.

“Yeah,” she said boldly, staring him down. “It isn’t. I’m sorry your plans got delayed but taking it out on me isn’t going to get you back to 1945 any faster.”

He looked down and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know that,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have said what I said. It wasn’t fair.” She didn’t look to be softening when he looked back up. He sighed again. “You have every right to be mad at me,” he continued. “But could you just please do it from inside the car and not on a desert highway, walking toward certain death?”

Darcy stared at him for what felt like a long time before she rolled her eyes. “Certain death,” she muttered as she brushed past him on the way back to the driver’s side of the car. “Now who’s being dramatic?”

Darcy brought her red straw to her lips and took a sip of her lemonade. "And look, it's not like I don't love being the sole witness to our mutual depression," she said thoughtfully. "But I don't know what you're bitching about. You still know where Peggy is. Right now. In this month and year."

It had taken almost the of the rest of the day to get her to talk to him again. She’d been driving for most of it, pointedly ignoring his attempts at conversation until, somewhere around the first sign for Los Alamos, her stomach had growled loud enough for him to hear it. He’d seized the opportunity to barter a peace agreement by promising to pay for dinner if she’d stop with the silent treatment.

In hindsight, this might have been a mistake. The minute Darcy decided she wanted to talk to him again, it seemed all she wanted to talk about was Peggy.

“Go back and get her.” She let her eyes run shamelessly over his forearms before she continued. "Go roll your sleeves up in her line of sight and she'll probably forgive you for making her wait thirty years to come back."

Steve shook his head and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "It wouldn't work.”

"Why not?" she asked, reaching across the table to steal one of his fries. "You can't be that shallow that you don't want her back now because she's in her fifties."

"Of course not," he said immediately.

"Good," Darcy nodded. "Because what's hotter than a woman with sexy gray hair who can tell you exactly what to do to make her come?"

Steve choked on the water halfway down his throat. Darcy offered him a napkin and a wicked grin. "Not much is coming to mind," he admitted when he'd recovered and wiped his lips.

"So, what's the deal?" she asked after he'd taken another bite of his burger. "I'm sure she wouldn't kick you out of bed."

"Her husband might," he said wryly once he’d swallowed.

Darcy raised her eyebrows. "Your logic is flawed," she stated after a moment's consideration.

"How so?" he asked, surprised he had no urge to bristle. To tell her this was none of her business and to change the topic as far away from Peggy as possible.

"You knew about him before," she reminded. "When you were going to go all the way back to 1945," she spun her french fry in the puddle of ketchup on her plate. "You were okay with being the reason they weren't together once."

“It’s not the same thing,” he said, but he could hear how his own voice lacked conviction. “She wouldn’t have married him if I’d come back—”

“You don’t know that,” she reminded him. “Maybe you two wouldn’t have worked out. Maybe you’d spend more than twenty minutes together and realize you don’t have anything in common.”

“I doubt that.”

She shrugged. “You doubt whatever you want,” she said. “I’m just pointing out the kind of shit decision it would have been to rewrite her whole life when you know, for a fact, she moved on and was happy without you.”

He pursed his lips and studied her, amazed that she could be so casual while handing out this kind of observation. “And what about me?” he asked finally. “What if I can’t be happy without her?”

Darcy scoffed. “Have you ever tried?” When he didn’t answer right away, she doubled down. “Not gone-on-a-few-first-dates-to-shut-up-your-friends kind of trying,” she clarified. “Like, a real, genuine, this-is-my-life-now attempt to be happy in a way that has nothing to do with Peggy?” When he still found he had nothing to say, she sat back with another shrug. “I’m just saying—I’d think it’d get old after a while.”

He lifted his brow. “What?”

“The whole…tragic star-crossed lovers thing,” she motioned vaguely in his direction. “I’ve always thought that real love—the kind you stick around for? It should be comfortable—easy—not end-of-the-world drama and craziness. It should just…” she moved her shoulder a third time. “Fit.”

He frowned. “Are you talking me in or talking me out of trying to be with her?” he asked.

“I’m just talking,” she assured him. “You can do whatever you want. But you’re the one who thinks that nosing in on her marriage now is somehow different than nosing in on it 25 years ago.”

They were quiet for a few minutes while Darcy busied herself with finishing her meal. He let out another breath and turned his plate so she could have access to his fries. "It is kind of tiring,” he admitted. “The whole…tragic star-crossed lovers thing,” he repeated her phrase dully.

“Only kind of?” she asked.

"No,” he confessed. “It’s fucking exhausting. How many times does something have to not work out before you admit that it’s just not meant to be?"

"Whatever the number is," Darcy said, surprising him with an answer for his rhetorical question. "Something tells me yours is about five times higher than the national average."

He tried to fight the smile when it tugged at the corner of his lips. "You're probably right."

The clerk at that night’s motel gave their bedraggled appearance a critical eye as Darcy signed the log and dug out a ten-dollar bill. “King or two queens?” she asked, glancing between them with a raised eyebrow.

“Two queens,” Darcy said immediately and jerked a thumb over her shoulder at him. “I’m his parole officer. A strict hands-off policy comes with the job.”

Steve blinked in surprise and found he could do nothing more than offer a nervous half-smile when the clerk gave him a further once-over. “From which prison?”

“Upstate,” Darcy said, giving the clerk a knowing look as she accepted the key. “Thanks so much.”

The phone began to ring as they left the office. “I’m your parolee?” he repeated, holding the door open for her out of habit. “You know you don’t actually have to make up a different cover story at every motel we stay, right?”

She scoffed. “Where’s the fun in that?”

**Day Five**

“What is it?” Steve asked finally raising his eyes from his breakfast to find Darcy studying him intently.

“Nothing,” she shrugged as she idly twirled her butter knife like a baton through her fingers.

“You’re staring,” he reminded.

“I’m studying,” she countered. “There’s a difference.”

“What and why are you studying?” he asked with a sigh that felt a little too heavy for so early in the morning.

“You,” she said plainly. “And to make sure I pick the right one.”

“The right what?”

“Joke for my bargain.”

Steve set his fork down and steadied himself. “I feel like I’m going to regret asking this,” he warned them both. “But what are you talking about?”

“My plan to keep us from killing each other. Something to ensure we don’t repeat yesterday’s fiasco.”

“Something like what?”

“Like this bargain I’m about to offer you.”

“Oh boy.”

“I’m going to tell you a joke, okay? And if you laugh, then the spell is broken, and you and I are best friends until we go home. If you can Van Damme me and not even crack a smile, then I’ll shut up and leave you alone the rest of the trip.” She raised her eyebrows. “Deal?”

Steve sighed a second time and rubbed at his closed eyes. “Sure,” he said with a shrug. He hadn’t felt like laughing in what felt like months. He couldn’t imagine that any dumb joke in Darcy’s arsenal was going to change that. “Go for it.”

Immediately, she sat up straight and cleared her throat. “Okay,” she clasped her hands on the table in front of her. “What do you call two crows standing together?”

The answer, of course, was _attempted murder_. He’d heard that joke before—more than once—and it shouldn’t have been funny the first time, let alone now. But Steve felt the muscles of his face betray his desire to stay stoic. He clenched his jaw and tried desperately to smother down the urge to smile.

But it was too late. Across the table, Darcy’s face lit up brilliantly with a mixture of pride and delight and, feeling thoroughly defeated, Steve dropped a hand over his eyes to cast his gaze down at the table as the waitress approached.

“Everything okay, over here?” she asked, holding out a pot of coffee.

“Everything is wonderful,” Darcy assured her before she squinted at the nametag pinned to her butter yellow uniform. “Denise?”

The middle-aged woman raised her eyebrows. “Yes?” she asked, refilling both of their mugs.

“This has really been a lovely breakfast,” she said sincerely. “I just wanted to tell you that. I’m Darcy, by the way,” she held out a hand and waited for Denise to shake it before she gestured across the table, “and this is my best friend, Steve.”

Charmed—if a bit confused—Denise laughed. “It’s very nice to meet you both,” she said as Steve lowered his hand.

“Nice to meet you, too,” he muttered.

The rest of the day, to anyone she had reason to speak with, Darcy introduced him as her best friend, Steve. A gas station attendant, another waitress, a farmer at a roadside stand where they stopped for directions and a quart of strawberries.

Except at the motel where they stopped for the night. Then she requested two beds again and introduced him as Bob, her parole officer.

***

Across the room, Darcy’s bed squeaked for the third time. He heard her shifting around in the scratchy sheets, obviously trying not to make too much noise in her discomfort. Steve opened his eyes and stared up through the dark at the beige popcorn ceiling. “What’s wrong?”

The shuffling stopped abruptly. “Uh, nothing,” Darcy’s voice sounded small. Tired. A little sadder than he was used to. “I just can’t sleep.”

“I know,” he said, staying on his back. “I’ve been listening to you toss and turn for the last half hour. Is something wrong?”

“I just…” he heard her squirming while she hesitated to finish her sentence. “I just remembered something.” He waited for her to go on. He didn’t need to ask—he knew she would. “It’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow.”

Unexpectedly, Steve felt his heart sink in sympathy. “Oh.”

“I could call her,” Darcy said, her sad smile evident even in the dark. “But she’s seventeen. She won’t be my mom for twenty years.”

He took in a deep breath, wishing for a moment that he was the kind of person who knew what to say when someone was upset. The kind of person who could make her feel better in this insane, impossible situation. “But this isn’t permanent—”

“I know,” she cut him off. “I know that it’ll all be fine and we’ll be…” she trailed off and started again. “I just realized that until we’re—y’know— _back_ …my parents are going to think that I disappeared.”

“Darcy—”

“Jane’s going to have to tell them that she doesn’t know what happened to me,” she continued, sounding as though this was a new realization for her. “I was just there one minute and gone the next. She doesn’t…she doesn’t have any idea. She doesn’t even know where to look. She doesn’t even know where to _start_.”

Steve threw back the thin sheets of his bed and crossed the small room to sit on the edge of hers. He reached out and covered her hand in the dark, hoping to interrupt the panicked rambling that he could tell was right on the tip of her tongue. “Darcy,” he repeated firmly. “As soon as we can, you’re going back to your own timeline. The right way,” he added with a half-smile. “So no one will ever know you were gone.”

The room was dark enough that he could only make out the outline of her face when she turned to him. The light from the parking lot caught in her large, luminous eyes that looked dangerously glassy. “But I _am_ gone, Steve,” she reminded him softly. “I’m gone right now. And until I get back…they’re going to be so worried—” she stopped and sniffed sharply. “I’m sorry,” she said around a heavy exhale. “I’ll shut up.”

Steve let his thumb run slowly over the top of her hand. “I promise,” he said firmly. “I _promise_ that you’re going to go home.”

She turned her hand to squeeze her fingers around his in an act Steve found surprisingly comforting. “We both are.”

He nodded and squeezed her hand back. “Get some sleep, okay?”

He’d only barely made it back to his own bed before the room was filled with Darcy’s light snoring. Steve smiled in the dark and rolled to face the wall, urging sleep to be just as quick to arrive for him.

**Day Six**

“Cows on my side,” Darcy said as the wind through the open windows whipped her hair into her face.

“Those are the same cows you just took a point for,” Steve argued.

“No, those are new cows,” she assured him. “There was a barn in the middle of two fields. Clearly different cows.”

He sighed and shook his head. “What’s the score?”

“I’m kicking your ass,” she said with a happy bounce of her shoulders. “That’s the score.”

He tapped the outside of his door and scanned his side of the horizon. Nothing but empty fields as far as he could see. “Let’s see some action over here.”

Darcy was still winning—and still laughing—when they crossed the state line into California.

*******

Behind the main desk of the physics department of UC Berkeley, a woman with clear cat-eye glasses and silver hair pulled back in a severe knot at the nape of her neck. She didn’t react to the bright smile Darcy presented as they approached the desk.

“Can I help you?”

“I certainly hope so,” Darcy said, not deterred by the woman’s obvious indifference. “We’re looking for a Janet Van Dyne,” she said with confidence. “She works here.”

The receptionist frowned. Her thin lips folded into a firm, pink line. “Who?”

“J-Janet?” Darcy repeated, a little less certain. “Janet Van Dyne. I think she’s a…PhD student?”

“Oh, not in this department, sweetheart.”

Darcy blinked. “Why not?”

“There are no women in this department, honey,” the receptionist said with only a slightly more patronizing tone than she’d had initially. “Maybe she works somewhere else.”

“Why would she work somewhere else? She’s a physicist,” Darcy insisted. “She’s a brilliant, amazing physicist—”

Steve placed a hand on her shoulder to stop her. “It’s possible we’re thinking of the wrong person,” he intervened quickly. “But is there a chance there are student records we could look through?”

His question earned him a pointed look. “What is this about, sir? Are you with the police? Is this Janet woman in some kind of trouble?”

He held back the grievous sigh and maintained his practiced, polite smile. “No,” he assured her. “We’re not with the police.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” she scoffed. “But I’m not in the business of just giving out the information to total strangers.”

“We need her help,” Darcy broke in. “She’s kind of the last person I can think of who might be able to help us. And we’ve come a very long way and if there’s any chance that she’s here, I would really like it if you could at least point us in the direction of someone who can actually point us in the right direction.”

Steve, catching the way Darcy’s tone had caused the receptionist’s eyes to narrow. He smiled tightly and placed his hand under Darcy’s elbow, pulling her gently away from the desk. “Darcy,” he said quietly, willing himself to stay calm. “You can’t yell at her.”

“I don’t _want_ to yell at her,” she whispered back. “But I don’t know why she’s saying that Janet isn’t here when I know for a _fact_ that I read a million times that she’s supposed to be here from 1970 to 1975 and if she’s not _here,_ Steve—”

“Okay, okay,” he put his hands on both of her shoulders and leveled his gaze with hers. “It’s okay,” he assured her. “If you’re really sure she’s here, then we just have to find her. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?”

Darcy nodded. “We can split up,” she suggested. “I’ll um, I’ll check the other sciences and you see if you can find, maybe a registrar or something? Someone who could tell us where she is?”

“Yeah,” he agreed quickly. “That big fountain we passed on the way in?” he nodded toward the door. “Meet there when you’re done, okay?”

She nodded again and took off for the nearest campus map while Steve enjoyed a few seconds of relief that the edge of panic had disappeared from her voice.

That relief was short-lived. It took longer than he expected to find the registrar’s office, and longer still to convince someone to check their student records for Janet Van Dyne. There was no record of Janet Van Dyne. Not as an undergrad, a graduate student, or a PhD candidate. She wasn’t a TA or a lab assistant or even a secretary.

As a last ditch effort for some good news to return to Darcy, Steve asked if there was any record of Hank Pym. There was. Pym had graduated from UC Berkeley with his bachelor’s degree. But anything more than his transcripts and an address for his parents in Modesto, the registrar was unable to provide.

Crestfallen and with a sinking feeling of dread and defeat weighing down each step, Steve made his way slowly to the bench beside the fountain where, he could tell from one look, Darcy was waiting without any good news of her own.

She didn’t look at him as he sat down next to her. The silence stacked thick and heavy between them right away, broken only by the babbling of the fountain and the sounds of the students on campus for the summer.

“This was supposed to be it, Steve,” she said finally, not taking her eyes off the fountain. “This was…”

“I know.”

“This was the only plan I had to get home. I didn’t…” she stopped and pressed her lips together firmly. “I didn’t let myself think about what we’d do if she wasn’t here.”

“Darcy…” Anything beyond her name died on his lips. Because he didn’t know what to say. And he didn’t know what to do. And he knew that nothing he could say or do would make anything better anyway.

“And if Natasha was going to come back,” she said as a line formed between her eyebrows the longer she stared at the water. “Wouldn’t she be back by now? Do you think something went wrong?”

He dropped his eyes down to the hands he’d clasped between his knees. “I honestly have no idea,” he admitted. “I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

She nodded slowly. “My head doesn’t hurt anymore,” she admitted after a few long moments with a look back down at her hands. “And my nose stopped bleeding.”

“That’s good.”

“Is it?”

The lines in his forehead deepened. “Isn’t it?”

She shrugged. “It stopped as soon as we got to Berkeley. It was like I flipped a switch or something.” Her lips pressed into a frown. “What do you think that means?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

The silence between them returned swiftly and uninvited, lingering thick and sticky before Darcy cleared her throat. “Maybe I’m supposed to stay here.”

Steve blinked, shaken from where he’d been staring at the nearest statue. “Stay?” he repeated before he glanced around the park. “Stay where? Here? In 1970?”

“Maybe?” she countered, turning to look at him. “It’s just as likely as anything else.”

“You’re not supposed to stay here,” he said patiently. “This is just a—”

“A big, cosmic fuck-up,” she finished for him.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” she repeated. “But for the first time since we—y’know—left London, I’ve been able to go more than six hours without feeling like I have an ice pick stuck in my brain.” She glanced around. “Maybe it’s a sign that I’m not supposed to go back.”

He didn’t look convinced. “That’s…” he stopped and shook his head again. “That feels like a big leap.”

“Maybe,” she conceded. “But if Natasha doesn’t come back…and if I really was wrong and no one I thought was supposed to be here is—” she shrugged. “Part of me would rather just go home. Back to Philadelphia.”

“Darcy…there’s nothing—”

“I don’t care,” she groaned, finally sounding as hopeless and exhausted as he felt. She dropped her head into her hands and squeezed her eyes shut. Steve caught the tears that clung to her eyelashes when she sat back up, blinking them away. “I’ve been trying to go home for _three years,_ ” she admitted in a voice that was thick and wobbly. “I was supposed to be in New Mexico with Jane for _one_ semester,” she laughed joylessly. “One semester. Finish my bachelors, go to law school, work with my dad. Make the world a better place.”

“Sounds like a nice plan,” Steve said, offering a sad smile of his own.

“It was,” she agreed. “And then there was a god in the middle of the desert. And then we were in Norway because his brother was trying to take over the world. And then London and now…” she looked around with another hopeless half-laugh. “Now forty years before any of that ever happens.” She shook her head again. “I missed my best friend getting married—last May, while the Chitauri were raging through New York. And my sister just had a baby right before the Dark Elves dropped in. And now I can’t even remember what I said to my parents the last time I talked to them.”

He frowned. “So, your plan is to go back to Pennsylvania and—what? Drop anchor? Wander around what’s going to be your hometown in twenty years? Look at the house you’re going to grow up in?” When she didn’t answer, he sighed. “Whatever you’re thinking you’re going back to…” His mouth fell into that familiar grim line. “It’s not there.”

Darcy pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them as she dropped her head to let a few tears fall. He reached out tentatively and placed a hand on her back. “You don’t have to worry about driving me back,” she said quietly into her knees. “I’ll figure out a way there myself.”

Grateful she’d given him something to grasp onto, Steve seized the opportunity. “What about me?” She lifted her head and stared at him incredulously. She didn’t bother to wipe at the tears that streaked down her fair cheeks. “I thought we were best friends,” he continued, relieved when she smiled and shook her head. “You’re just going to leave me here on my own? Friendless and alone?”

“Steve,” she said softly, letting her feet touch back on the ground. “You really don’t have to humor me anymore. We both know you’d do better on your own.”

“Maybe,” he agreed. “But come on, this was only plan B. We’ve got twenty-four more plans to burn through before I let you give up and ditch me.”

“That feels like a lot of plans.”

“It is,” he agreed. “How about—” he stopped and thought about it. “How about you give me two weeks here to figure out our next move and if we’re still coming up empty and you _still_ want to go back to Philly then I won’t stop you.” He raised his eyebrows. “Does that sound fair?”

Darcy sighed and swiped beneath her eyes. “Fine,” she said, sitting all the way up, trapping his hand between her shoulders and the bench. “Two weeks.”

“Good,” he said with a decisive nod. “Are you hungry? Because I’m starving.”

She let out a wet laugh and let him pull her to her feet. “Yeah. All this failure worked up an appetite.”

Two weeks, he repeated to himself as they made their way back to the car.

He could work with that.

**Author's Note:**

> I borrowed things from Angel, Lost, and The Venture Brothers for this fic. If you've never played Cows on my Side, I warn you that it's VERY easy to get addicted. You've been warned. ;-) 
> 
> ____
> 
> Come play with me on tumblr: @idontgettechnology and join me at ishipitpod.com for weekly podcast on fandom and fanfic by yours truly. 
> 
> *kisses*


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